


Wild Horses

by Bluejay141519



Series: One of Those Moments [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, Car Accidents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Guilt, Hopeful Ending, Hospitals, M/M, Major Character Injury, Other: See Story Notes, Team as Family, Unfortunately the mystery of Bruce Cassidy will not be solved in this fic, Unreliable Narrator, nonexplicit mentions of sex, the plot of this story is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-22 23:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20882240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluejay141519/pseuds/Bluejay141519
Summary: The cop pulls out a notepad and starts to scribble on the page. “How do you know it’s him?”“He told me he was driving here, I know the route and I know his car, this is exactly where he would’ve been. I- I was on the phone with him when it happened.” He chokes out. The man in uniform frowns, but keeps asking questions.“And your name?”“I’m Patrice Bergeron, I’m his fiance.”....Or - The other side of Landslide.





	Wild Horses

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING WITH THE STORY:  
there's a few points in this story that mention drugs, a nonconsent situation where a character takes those drugs, and implied intent for nonconsenual sexual activity. If *any* of this might be triggering to you, please do not read this story. It is not marked, and mentioned twice. Charlie McAvoy and Jake Debrusk are the characters who are victims, but they are not main characters of this story. Jake appears in one scene, Charlie is only mentioned. 
> 
> There is no graphic depiction of either event. Only the aftermath is shown.
> 
> In other news, this was really hard for me to write and if you keep thinking it's all over the place, thats because I tried to model Patrice's head space after my own experience with a loved one being in the hospital.

_ Childhood living is easy to do _

_ The things you wanted I bought them for you _

_ I watched you suffer a dull aching pain _

_ Now you've decided to show me the same _

_ No sweeping exit or offstage lines _

_ Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind _

_ I know I've dreamed you a sin and a lie _

_ I have my freedom but I don't have much time _

_ Faith has been broken tears must be cried _

_ Let's do some living after we die _

**...**

**_Patrice_.**

“No, no that’s my- no _ wait _ , wait I have to go with him, _ I have to go with him!” _ Patrice’s sob echoes horribly, bouncing off the concrete around him to mock his desperation. 

“Sir, I can not let you go with the ambulance-” The police officer is kind but he stands firm, and the rational part of his brain is making sure that he doesn’t get arrested for assaulting a police officer. 

“Where- where are you taking him, _ please _ I need to- I need- oh _ god _.” 

The cop looks seriously concerned now, which is probably fair. Patrice feels like he’s one step away from hyperventilating. His brain is nothing but a static white out, consumed by panic.

He saw the car. 

He _ saw the car _.

The bent, broken, _ crumpled _mess of a car that belongs to Brad. That- that Brad was in while he was on the phone with Patrice. 

He’d been nervous, agitated all day and jumping at everything, because his gut kept telling him something was wrong. Something was _ going to go wrong. _

He didn’t want Brad to leave. The boys would’ve been fine, but Brad insisted, reminding Patrice that they asked for help, “_ What’s the point of saying we’ll be there when they need us if we don’t show up?” _

He heard him. Talking nervously on the phone, Marchy has been laughing, distracted, and then he heard him gasp and then the line went dead. 

The line went dead, and Patrice had been shaking. 

“I have to go with him.” He tries again, voice cracking. Even though the ambulance is leaving, has _ left _, he still feels the need to run after it. “I have to see him again, I can’t- this can’t be-”

It can’t be the last time he sees him alive. This night - it can’t be. He can’t deal with the idea that watching Marchy smile as he walked out the door, saying_ ‘I’ll call you’ _ over his shoulder, is the _ last time. _

“Sir, what is your relation to him?”

Patrice blinks. His...relation? “I- I don’t, um- no I need to-”

The officer is still looking at him with concern, pity even.

Patrice doesn’t want pity. He just wants to know where Brad is, and he wants to know that he’s okay.

“I know you want to see him, but I can’t give out information unless I know who you are, and what your relation is to the victim.”

Patrice fucking flinches, at the last word. “He’s not-” He cuts himself off, because he _ is _, isn’t he, he is a victim.

It’s just… ‘_ victim’ _ sounds like he’s dead. 

He’s not. He’s not dead. Brad can’t be dead.

He takes a deep breath. He’s got to calm down. He’s got to calm down or this isn’t gonna work. Patrice needs information and having a panic attack on the street isn’t going to get him that. 

He’s just- he’s just going to ignore everything. (Ignore what’s left of the car, ignore that he might be dead by the time Bergy gets to the hospital, ignore that he never said _ ‘I love you _’ back). 

Just ignore it. It’s fine. 

Maybe he can convince himself he’s asleep, and this is all a very vivid nightmare.

“His name is Brad Marchand.”

The cop pulls out a notepad and starts to scribble on the page. “How do you know it’s him?”

“He told me he was driving here, I know the route and I know his car, this is exactly where he would’ve been. I- I was on the phone with him when it happened.” He chokes out. The man in uniform frowns, but keeps asking questions. 

“And your name?”

“I’m Patrice Bergeron, I’m his fiance.”

**....**

_ “I want to be with you forever.” _

_ The words are murmured into his skin, soft from his lips and gentle in nature but so, so powerful. _

_ Patrice sucks in a breath, disrupting the steady rise and fall of his chest. Brad hums and shifts impossibly closer, already on the edge of sleep in his post orgasm haze. He doesn’t even know if Brad meant to say the words. _

_ All he knows is that he wants to say it back. He feels those words, somewhere deep in his chest and knows he wants that too. He wants this for the rest of his life, again and forever. _

_ “I love you.” He whispers back. The words fall on deaf ears, Brads gentle snores filling the dark room. “I love you so much, Brad Marchand.” _

**....**

Mass Gen is quiet at night.

The cop that he was talking to - an older guy, clearly having been on the job for a while - was nice enough to talk to the nurses when he got there. They let him stay in a waiting room closer to the back, so secluded that it doesn’t really feel like it’s open to the public. No one is in there but him.

Patrice appreciates that. The officer clearly knew who he was, and therefor who Brad is. The implications of what Patrice said were more than likely not lost.

At least this way there won’t be any pictures of him sitting in a hospital chair looking completely devastated.

He has to call Zee. He has too- the guys are still at that bar, he’s- 

He’s supposed to be a leader. The leader, the steady voice, the calm one. He doesn’t wear the C, doesn’t want it, but he’s- the A isn’t exactly easy. They all have their own ways of helping the team. 

He’s supposed to be more together than this.

Everything has been slipping by him, words and expressions and actions sliding around him. He doesn’t remember how he got to the hospital, or where his car is. He doesn’t know what time it is. He might’ve asked the cop his name at least ten times on the way over. 

Patrice doesn’t even realize he still has his phone on him until it starts vibrating in his pocket. He fishes it out from his jeans and stares at the unknown number until the screen goes black. 

He doesn’t remember taking it with him. But then, the only thing he can recall from the last hour is being in his car when he first got a glimpse of the accident.

His hands don’t feel like his own as they swipe at the screen. Everything feels really heavy, the air around him pressing on his chest and reluctantly flowing into his lungs when he commands it. He sort of wonders if this is what it would be like to breath water, sluggish and effortful as it all flowed around him.

“_ Bergy? _”

He didn’t even realize he called. 

“_ Patrice? Are you alright?” _

Right. Right, he should- talk. Yeah. He can do this.

Patrice sits up a little straighter and closes his eyes, intent on making sure his voice is steady. There’s a commanding tone that Chara gets that lets Bergy know that they are having a Captain And Alternate conversation not a Long Time Friends conversation. It makes him feel like he’s in trouble. 

He can do this. He’s just going to give him the facts, and then they’ll- they’ll go from there. Zee will know what to do.

Vaguely he wonders if this is something he could have googled. ‘_ What do you do when the love of your life gets in a serious car accident while on the phone with you? How do you deal with the fact that he might die because of you? _’

He opens his mouth and instead of words a sob wrenches itself out of his chest. It sounds so loud in the empty room he’s sitting in. A warning of whats to come. He slaps a hand over his mouth to try and stop it somehow, but only succeeds in muffling the next one.

“_ Where are you. _” It’s not a question that comes out of the Captains mouth, it’s a demand. Even in that quiet voice of his Patrice can hear a promise. One to do everything he can to help him, and one to make whoever hurt him pay.

“MGH.” He chokes out, then inhales haltingly. 

“_ Are you alright?” _

“No.”

_ “Patrice you have to give me more than that. Are you in-” _

“I’m not-” He sobs again, tears sliding down his cheeks to mock the way he’s trying to stay together. “It isn’t- isn’t me. I’m not hurt.”

There’s a pause. He knows Zee gets it.

_ “I’m on my way.” _

“No- no you have to get the kids.”

_ “The- what!?” _

“The rookies- the not rookies, our rookies, they went out. Brad gave them the name of this bar, and Jake texted us to come get them because they were getting really sloppy, and Marchy was- was-” He can’t breath. Why can’t he breath? He was so aware of doing it before, why can’t he do it now?

“_ Patrice, I need you to listen me okay?” _

He nods, choking on breath as he inhales. 

“_ I need you to keep it together for a little bit longer alright, because I cannot go to every bar in Boston trying to find them. _”

Right. Right, right he can do this. It’s alright. Just- just pretend everything’s okay. He can pretend.

Bergy manages to get out the name of the bar, and Chara promises to take care of everything. Before he hands up he makes Patrice tell him what floor he’s on.

“_ He’s gonna be okay, alright? He’s gonna be fine.” _

“You didn’t see the car.” Patrice replies heavily. Breathing is back to the steady, hard thing that it was before.

There’s a pause_ . “You...did?” _

“I was _ talking to him _ Zee.”

He hears a murmur of something in czech, then a few swears.

_ “Promise me you won’t go anywhere.” _

“I won’t.”

And he doesn’t.

**...**

_ “Are you sure about this?” _

_ “Of course I’m sure, how could I not be sure? I spent three months making sure I was sure, and another three hours working up the nerve to call you, so if you could just like, help with this instead of second guessing me I’d really appreciate it Zee because I’m second guessing myself enough I don’t need you to do it too.” _

_ Chara flicks the blinker on in what might be the most sarcastic movement ever, which is really saying something. “Feel better?” He deadpans. _

_ Patrice blows out a deep breath. “A little bit, yeah.” _

_ They pull into the parking lot. The jeweler is across the street in a fancy looking building with lots of glass. He feels like he should’ve worn a suit. It looks like that sort of place where they frown upon you wearing jeans. _

_ “He’ll say yes.” _

_ “I know.” _

_ “Okay.” _

_ They sit there in silence for a few moments, while Patrice tries to breath. This is why he called Zee instead of Pasta or anyone else. He knows when to give Patrice some space and when to push. _

_ “We do have to get out of car eventually, you know.” _

_ This would a moment to push. _

_ “I’m going to fucking die.” _

_ “You’ll do great, lets go.” _

_ It ends up being a lot less scary than he thought. In fact he doesn’t even get a ring that day, instead narrows it down to three options which are printed and folded up in his pocket. His mom felt so bad that she couldn’t find his granddads ring that she made him promise to let her help him with the whole ‘buying an engagement ring for the love of his life’ thing. _

_ He just hopes that whatever they pick, Brad will like it. That Brad will say yes, but won’t follow that up with ‘but not right now’. _

_ He really needs to know that Brad won’t be as afraid as Patrice is, because he knows that with that ring and that question, everything is going to change. _

**…**

It wasn’t technically a lie. 

He told the cop he was Brad's fiance, and like - okay, no, he hasn’t actually confirmed that. He’s got the ring, and he’s got the whole thing all planned out. He doesn’t think Brad will say ‘_ no’ _, so technically they’re already engaged. 

He just hasn’t..._ confirmed _ it yet.

Putting aside how flawed that logic is, it’s still the thing that he clings too. It’s the only thing his brain can focus on, because it’s the only positive he’s got.

Brad could die. Brad is dying. Brad is probably going to marry him if he survives.

(The doctors couldn’t tell him much, but they could tell him _ that _ much - it was an _ ‘if’ _ right now, not a _ ‘when’ _.)

He should call Brads parents. Shit, he should call _his _parents. He should call coach, and management, and Backes too because he’s the other A and Brads friend and they all deserve to hear it from Patrice. If Brad is dying, is he’s_ going to_ _die _then they should know. They should be here.

He can also admit that he should maybe possibly _ probably _have someone here for him. Just someone to sit next to him, is really all he needs. Someone to make sure he’s still breathing.

The ring tone of his phone slices through the quiet of the bathroom, making him flinch. He moved in here a little while after he hung up on Zee because he convinced himself that the air was to thin outside. 

The clock was too loud. The chair was too hard. The lady down the hall and to the left wouldn’t stop crying and he couldn’t stop rocking back and forth in his spot while pulling at his hair.

The bathroom is quiet. He can breath here.

His phone goes quiet before he can get to it, but it rings in his hand a few seconds after. It’s Chara.

_ “Where are you?” _

“The um- the bathroom. On the...I think it’s the fourth floor-” His phone beeps at him, signaling a dropped call. A second later the bathroom door bangs open. He’s still staring at his phone in confusion when he hears a familiar sigh.

“Jesus Pat.”

“You hung up on me?” He asks, lifting his head. Zee looks _ really _tall from the floor.

Chara doesn’t even respond, just lifts him up off the tile floor and drags him back outside. The noise hits him like a punch to the face. He flinches back, but Zee has an strong grip on his arm so he can’t escape back into the bathroom. They don’t go back to the waiting room though. Instead, Bergy finds himself being led through the many halls of the hospital to a little room at the end, which has a solid wood door and no windows. 

Inside is a hodge podge of teammates, enough to make Patrice wonder exactly how long he was in the bathroom. It didn’t feel like long enough to get this many people here, but then he doesn’t really _ remember it, _ he just knows it happened. 

Gryz, Torey, and Danton are sitting next to each other, clothed in a hodge podge of pajamas and sweatshirts and looking like they just rolled out of bed, which - considering the circumstances, they probably did. Backes is sitting in the corner murmuring quietly to Jake, who’s shaking slightly while staring at nothing.

It’s DeBrusk’s presence that makes Patrice’s brain start working again. 

He raises an eyebrow in question at Zee, although it feels like he’s listening through someone else’s ears as Zee tells him that Tuukks is downstairs with Pasta who’s getting stitches in his hand and arm. Bradon is with Charlie, who’s being monitored to see if he needs to be admitted. They’re apparently doing blood work to see if he was drugged. 

“Drugged?” He hisses, glancing at Jake just in time to see him flinch at the word. “What the hell happened there?”

Chara pulls him towards a chair. Only after he sits does he realize how weak his legs were.

“There was a fight between Pasta and like half the bar. We don’t really know why, but…” The captain lowers his voice, eyes darting to the rookie. “We think someone tried to…”

Patrice stares at the floor for a little while before the meaning behind the open ended sentence hits him. He snaps his eyes up to Chara in horror, but the captain doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.

A diluted form of guilt settles in his stomach as he looks closer at the kid. Jake isn’t just shaking a little, he’s _ trembling _, entire body shivering while his eyes look at something that is not there. He looks about as out of it as Patrice felt. Still feels, but the repulsion at the idea of Jake having to go through that, along with the fact that Charlie and Pasta are being treated three floors below him, is quickly settling him back into reality.

He’s working on getting back in his head, but it’s- he’s never had to do this before. It’s sort of like all his thoughts are floating above his head, and he’s got to be the one to try and catch them all and put them back in his brain. It’s work, and it’s unwanted. Because being aware of reality means having to deal with what his current situation has to offer.

Unfortunately, they’ve got a lot of time to wait.

**….**

_ “Are you sure about the third one?” _

_ “It’s whatever you want, honey I’m just saying I like the third option the best.” _

_ “Yeah, but do you think he will? What if he hates it? What if-” _

_ “Patrice, sweetheart, I love you and all, but you’re really overthinking this. He’s going to love whatever you get him, because you are the one giving it to him.” _

_ “Maman-” _

_ “He isn’t going to say no. I know it’s a big change, and that’s okay, but he loves you and you love him. It’s okay to be nervous, but don’t disrespect Brad’s love for you.” _

_ The door to the apartment slams shut, making Patrice jump. Brad must be back with the food. _

_ “I have to go. I love you, Maman.” _

_ “Je t’aime, Patrice, call me later okay?” _

_ “I will. See you soon.” He feels a little bad about hanging up on his mom so soon after calling, but Brad pokes his head into the room with a shit eating grin on his face that says he either brought home a wild animal or the chinese place messed up again and gave them double everything. _

_ He sighs, but manages a smile back. “How was the drive?” _

_ “Packed with idiots. How do you take care of a possum?” _

** _…_ **

Reality fades back with a gentleness that was lacking when he was smacked out of it.

The floor goes from a blue green blur to sharp cornered squares and a severe lack of dust or dirt that seems only possible in a hospital. There’s a clock on the grey wall to his right, but it doesn’t click like the one in the first waiting room did. It tells him it’s nearly four in the morning when coach walks in to talk to Zee and it’s after four thirty when they’re done.

The air in the room shifts from unattainable to dry and stale, but at least his lungs have rediscovered how to establish a normal breathing pattern. His chest is tight and his back is stiff and his legs are sore, but he’s there in the room and that’s about when it all falls apart again.

They are going to have to wait a long time. An extremely long time. He has, unfortunately, been in hospitals before, and he knows that this is going to take forever. He sees the image of the car every time he blinks, he knows its going to be a lot of work to put Brad back together.

He knows, rationally at least, that he’d rather wait hours on end and be told they saved Brad than be told flat out that they didn’t. 

But his boyfriend is dying. His boyfriend is dying, could die, could be lost to him forever and Patrice was _ on the phone with him _as he got in the accident.

He is not being rational right now.

It is some type of hell to have to sit in a dim waiting room long enough for everything to settle in. It’s worse to know that several of the other people he cares about - people he feels responsible for, people he’s supposed to _ protect _ \- were also hurt, were _ traumatized. _

And who’s fault is that? If he can blame himself for causing the accident, and blame the boys for making Brad go out in the first place, and even blame the piece of shit who tried to have his way with Jake, who does he blame for putting everyone in this situation in the first place? Pasta for taking them out? Or Brad, for giving them the name of the bar?

How much of this is on him, for not stopping the guys from going out, for not stopping Brad from leaving, for distracting him from driving because he just had to call and fret. Who is he supposed to blame for the whole thing, the drunk guy who crushed Marchy’s car into the side of the highway, or himself, for not being the one driving?

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until a pair of hands cover his. “Patrice?”

“I can’t do this.” He whispers. He can’t, he can’t- he can’t be in this room like this, with the young guys sleeping in the corner and the vets trying to paste everyone back together. They have practice in the afternoon, there’s a game tomorrow, there’s a million things he’s supposed to be responsible for and they’re all in this room asking him why he isn’t _ doing his job. _

He’s supposed to protect them. He’s supposed to protect _ him _.

“Pat-”

“I can’t- I can’t be here, I can’t-”

“Just breath, okay-”

“No, no I need- I need out, I need-”

His head is jumbled mess, all those thoughts he had to catch and put back now stuffing up his brain, so many things vying for his attention. It’s all too much, and he’s been sitting on the edge of a another panic attack since Zee first found him.

It’s him who’s in front of Patrice right now, and it’s him who is currently coaching Patrice through taking deeper breathes. It’s not like a full blown ‘_ I can’t inhale at all and I’m so dizzy I’m going to pass out’ _ sort of panic attack that he can get, and it’s not one of those silent ones where it feels like he can’t move at all and he doesn’t understand how no one can see him freaking out.

It just-

It hits him, really. Along with all the other things, it hits him really, really hard.

Patrice could really lose him. This could be the last day Brad Marchand lives. The date on his tombstone.

It settles somewhere deep in his chest, this cold block of fear that’s jagged and cuts at his insides. His throat feels tight and there’s too much saliva in his mouth and suddenly there’s a trashcan in front of him, perfectly placed so when he hunches over and gags it’s right there for him.

He empties his stomach until there’s tears in his eyes and he can’t tell if its from the physical pain or from the idea of losing Brad.

There’s a wide hand on his back, gently rubbing circles despite how much a mess he is. Someone removes the bucket when he’s done and someone else shoves a wad of tissues in his face. A deep voice murmurs something and another equally quiet voice responds. It all happens over his head, and he remembers a time when he did this for someone else, when he thought that he would never be in this situation.

Like he would never let himself be in this situation. Like he ever had any choice.

“It’s gonna be okay.” Chara tells him, and he shakes his head.

He realizes now, how empty those words are.

**… **

_ There isn’t a possum in his kitchen, which is great, but there is a crap ton of food, which is less great. Brad laughed for a solid fifteen minutes at Patrice’s face when he’d first made the joke. _

_ “Yes, you’re hilarious, can we deal with the fact that we have enough chinese to feet several hockey teams?” _

_ Brad giggles, opening up containers. “You’re no fun.” _

_ “I’m realistic.” _

_ “Yeah, like I said- no fun.” _

_ “Bradley.” _

_ “Patrice.” Marchy copies his tone with a smile, stealing more of the lo mein. Patrice sighs. _

_ “Can we at least call the boys to come over and eat some of this? I don’t want to have chinese rotting in the fridge.” _

_ Brad feins offence. “How dare you assume I would let that happen? That’s an insult to my appetite.” _

_ “And your meal plan.” Patrice grumbles, finally picking up a plate. A balled up napkin hits him in the face and he glares. “Why do I like you?” _

_ “Because I add variety to your life and oh buddy, you definitely need it.” _

_ “You’re an ass.” _

_ “That too.” _

_ He doesn’t know why he even tries to win these things. Brad always ends up making him smile, and then thats the end of that. _

_ Like right now. _

_ “Besides, I can’t invite our little munchkins over to eat the rest of this, because I am introducing them to the world vicariously.” _

_ He ignores the labeling of the young guys as munchkins, mostly for maintaining his sanity. “How are you doing that from our apartment?” _

_ “I said ‘Vicariously’. As in, I feel I have trained our liney to be a proper extension of me, and am living through Pasta as he takes Jake and Charlie out to a bar.” _

** _…_ **

Patrice remembers what it was like, being the one in the hospital bed. He remembers waking up from surgery after his lung, Brad sobbing against Zee’s shoulder in the corner of the room. He remembers thinking how he was lucky - not just to be okay or to have people care about him, but to not have played the role of the one waiting. He didn’t have to be the one who was unsure.

He didn’t have to do _ this _.

Patrice is absolutely exhausted. He hasn’t slept, and he can’t even think of trying. His brain is buzzing with a million different thoughts, mixing emotions together in an attempt to deal with what’s happening. 

Lack of information is a free pass for his anxiety to run wild, and he’s just thought of scenario on top of scenario until he feels like he can’t find another that could possibly be worse. Because there are worse scenarios than Brad dying. 

There are worse things.

He goes for a walk when the walls seem to close and Patrice is sure he’s memorized every detail of the waiting room.

No one says anything to him when he leaves, and the halls offer the same amount of comfort as the waiting room with his teammates. Which is to say, exactly none.

The hospital is starting to wake up, an upcoming shift change creating an influx of staff. He winds through the floor, making laps until he feels less trapped. It works enough that he loses the insatiable urge to go back to the apartment. 

The walk is something like a reminder. He doesn’t have to stay here, he can leave whenever he wants, but Brad is here, and information on his health is also here, and everything about their lives moving forward is going to be dependent on that information. So as much as he yearns to go back to their apartment (as much as he wants the comfort, warmth, and safety that it represents) he can’t fathom leaving MGH without knowing.

Eventually he finds a hallway that seems to have very few people coming and going. He takes the small blessing and slides down the wall to sit on the floor. Eyes closed, he leans his head back and tries to calm down enough to think.

Naturally, his moment of solitude is brief. 

A throat clears next to him, accompanied by a shuffling of feet that Patrice’s brain identifies a familiar.

Pasta’s face is what greets him when open his eyes, and oh, _ great _, they can have this conversation.

He sits next to Bergy, never looking anywhere but the ground as he does. They sit in silence for a few minutes, both of them just breathing and staring at nothing. Patrice notices the white gauze pad taped over the inside of Pasta’s arm and realizes with an abrupt glance at his watch that it’s been almost eight hours since he first came in.

Patrice breaks the silence first.

“How’s Charlie?”

“They said they were gonna keep him, because in order to keep his oxygen levels right Brandon had to keep telling him to breathe, and apparently being unable to regulate your breathing rate on your own is grounds for admittance into a hospital.” Pasta doesn’t pause for breath the entire time and his tone is carefully flat.

“Jesus christ.” He murmurs, rubbing tiredly at his eye. The kid doesn’t deserve that. _ None of them _ deserve what happened. He has to keep reminding himself that. “Did they say if he was going to be okay? Was it drugs?”

There’s a pause before he gets his answer, in a distinctly guilty voice. “Yes. ”

“To which?”

“Both. They think it was some sort of like...uh, the nurse called it a date...rape?”

“Date rape drugs, yeah. Jesus Christ.” He closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. They were really going to do that. To Charlie. To the quiet, shy, chipmunk cheeked rookie who opened up around the team only after he learned they wouldn’t hurt him like previous teams had. 

He wants to throw up again.

They lapse back into silence, but this time the moment is shorter. Pasta is looking at him, and he’s the one who breaks the quiet this time.

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

More silence. He’s getting really tired of this.

“You know it’s okay to be not okay right?”

“It’s really not.”

“Bergy, you’re boyfriend is in the hospital-”

He turns to glare at his liney. “I’m _ fucking _aware Pasta, thank you.”

“So you don’t have to be perfect for us-”

“I’m _ not _.” Patrice snarls, and ah, yeah, he’s up for another wave of self hatred. “I wear the fucking A, it’s my job to help you guys, to protect the team. And instead of doing my job I was having a fucking panic attack in a hospital waiting room. I was sitting there fucking- pouting, or whatever the fuck, and Charlie can’t even breath on his own and Jake hasn’t been able to form a complete sentence and- no, it’s not alright. It’s not okay.”

His voice wavers the longer he talks, to the point that it’s almost cracking at the end. He doesn’t want to talk about this. He doesn’t want to try to get into with Pasta, a guy he’s not even sure he’s mad at. It’s just all so much, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

And thats the thing, isn’t it? The emotions and thoughts in his head are so complex, he can’t even begin to try to understand what’s going on with him. He can’t tell who he’s angry at, he can’t tell who to blame or if he even wants something to blame. He can’t deal with the fear in his stomach and he doesn’t understand the crippling guilt in his chest and he doesn’t know what’s causing the panic that keeps his spine rigid and breathing on the edge of hyperventilating. 

He doesn’t know how he can go from totally calm to sobbing hysterically and back again in the span of five minutes. He just hates that he does. He hates this place, and he hates himself and he hates god or whoever decided that this had to happen to them. He hates Pasta for talking to him. He hates Brad for getting in the car last night.

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking again until Pasta is putting his on Patrice’s knee.

“It’s alright Patrice.”

He gasps, pulling in air that drags down his throat. His hands find his hair, pulling hard enough that he’s able to exhale in a more controlled manor. “He’s going to die.”

“You don’t know that.”

“The him that’s coming out of that operating room is not going to be the same one that went in.” Patrice snaps, rapidly swinging away from fear and back to anger. “Even if he lives, it’s not going to be the same. He’ll probably never play hockey again, and I don’t know how to- to-”

He cuts himself off because he can’t say what he’s thinking. It feels like it makes everything a fucking lie, every ‘_ I love you’ _ a pile of bullshit. But it’s been cycling through his head, along with every other horrible scenario. He’s had to acknowledge, that on the slim chance Marchy lives, he won’t be the same. And he- it- it _ enrages _ him to be thinking these things. It makes him hate himself because he knows they're true. On the list of reasons Patrice Bergeron Is Actually a Pile of Trash and Everyone Should Hate Him, this is actually above the “ _ I distracted my boyfriend while he was driving and caused an accident that should’ve killed him instantly. _” 

“Part of him is going to die in there. Statistically it’s nearly impossible that the same Brad who walked out the door last night is going to be-”

“What difference does it make?” Pasta snaps. “You two have loved each other for years, you loved each other before you won the cup for crying out loud.”

“The _ difference _ , if that _ he’ll _be different. He could never wake up, he could never walk again or talk again or-”

Pasta looks angry. “Why does that matter?!”

“Because I don’t know if I could do it, okay?!” He yells. “I don’t know if I could stand there and see him like that every day when I know that isn’t him!”

The hallway is mercifully void of people, so at least the only ones hearing his damning words are the two of them. Unfortunately, it just makes his voice echo his words back at him.

He hates himself. He hates himself so, so much.

David looks at him like he’s lost his mind and Patrice takes his gaze away from his face and moves it to stare at the wall across from him. A few stray tears slide down his face with the movement. He doesn’t acknowledge them. 

“That’s bullshit.”

Patrice doesn’t move his gaze, just continues to cry silently.

“No, Bergy, that’s such bullshit it’s- you can’t really think that.”

“Pasta-”

“You two love each other more than life itself. I’ve fucking seen it, okay. Chara has seen it, everyone on the team has seen it. All you need is a pair of eyes and five minutes in the same room as you too.” He moves to be crouching in front of Patrice and forces eye contact. “I don’t think for one second that you’d leave him.”

Patrice swallows, and when he speaks it nothing but a whisper. “I don’t know how to love him without hockey. I don’t know how to love him if he’s not _ him _.”

He wants to leave here, and never come back. He wants to let Zee punch him as hard as he can, again and again until he’s unconscious on the floor, because that’s what he deserves.

He wants to be the one who was in the car.

“Yes, you do.” Pasta looks - well he looks way to wise for his age. Hell, he looks like he’s done this before.

“I know you’re scared. You have no answers and no way to fix this for him. Right now, you’re looking for something to focus your pain on, so you’re finding ways to blame yourself, because if you aren’t worth him coming back to then maybe you can convince yourself that it’s better if he dies. I promise you I understand what that’s like, but it won’t get you anywhere. It won’t make you feel better.”

Patrice inhales, shaky but more controlled. He nods, because he’s right, he’s _ right _ and it’s the most meaningful thing someones said to him since this all started. He just wants to feel better. He just wants to _ know _that it’ll get better.

David sits back at his side, but this time he’s close enough to press his shoulder against Patrices.

“How did you know all that?” Patrice asks after a while, when he’s calmed down and doesn’t feel so much like he’s about to fall apart at the seams. 

“What?”

“What you said about me trying to distance myself so the idea of him dying would be easier. Not that you aren’t smart or anything, but that was…” He searches for a word that won’t make it sound like an insult. “...specific. And not the kind of thing you know when someone tells you, thats something you learned.”

Pasta folds in on himself, dropping his gaze to the tile floor. “I...had something like this. A while ago.”

He tilts his head to the side, curious for something other than his own misery. “Did they die?”

“No.” Pasta sighs. “No, he woke up. He just...didn’t remember me.”

He doesn’t even blink at the pronoun. They lapse into silence, each sifting through memories. Patrice has no idea how long it’s been, but he wants something to take his mind away from this place, so he asks.

“Tell me about him.” 

It’s very telling about their situation that Pasta does.

“He was everything.” He whispers, eyes far away. “We were- we danced around each other, you know? The same way Charlie and Jake are right now. We were young, and we hooked up, and it was supposed to be just that but then we…” Pasta shakes his head. “I didn’t know he felt the same way. We argued, I...I said I either wanted more, or I wanted nothing at all, because I couldn’t keep doing it.”

Bergy bites his lip to keep from interrupting. “_ We were young” _ resonates inside him, because good god, he’s _ still _young. All of them are barely legal to drink in the states, they’re all still just kids. They shouldn’t have to deal with this.

“If you’re about to tell me that he got hurt right after-” Patrice starts, because _ jesus christ _, as least if Brad dies he’s going to do so knowing Patrice loves him. 

Pasta is already nodding though, and oh, yeah, okay here’s some perspective for him.

“I think- I _ know _ he was scared. To say yes to me. He was always so scared of messing things up, he was always _ so hard _ on himself. He convinced himself he was bad for me, so he left. Next game there was a hit that he didn’t get up from.” 

Patrice feels his eyebrows furrow in confusion. “He forgot...just you?” That doesn’t seem right. He obviously doesn’t know much about the brain, but that seems unlikely for a head injury to result in completely forgeting _ one _person, especially if they’re close.

“No, he didn’t- he didn’t remember the few days before and after the hit. So the argument and me…telling him I loved him.” 

“Oh my god, _ David _.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Pasta waves a hand at him, but his face says otherwise. 

He feels like he should regret asking about it, but all he’s feeling right now is relief. Which is definitely strange, considering what they’re talking about. 

It’s just- he’s been trying very hard not to be angry at Pasta. Pasta who first asked Brad about taking the rookies out, Pasta who didn’t take care of the boys like he thought they would, Pasta who Patrice blamed when he wasn’t blaming himself. 

Pasternak who’s Patrice’s friend, and who doesn’t deserve his anger or blame because it wasn’t his fault that the person who hit Brads car was drunk and high. It wasn’t his fault.

It’s wrong, probably. Knowing that Pasta’s been through something like this, maybe even something worse, shouldn’t be the thing that makes Patrice think rationally. 

It is, though. He doesn’t know why or how, and he decides right then and there that he doesn’t want to. He’s just glad he doesn’t have to deal with unfounded anger at one of his friends anymore.

“Did you ever tell him again?”

Apparently having a major injury occur to the love of his life leaves him with absolutely no filter. Luckily Pasta doesn’t seem offended by it. 

“I didn’t. I stopped seeing him so much, and then we stopped playing on the same team and...that was it.”

They’re silent for a while. He doesn’t know what Pasta is going through, but he know’s its probably at least a little shitty that he’s thinking ‘_ at least you aren’t him _.’

He’s done giving a shit about what’s supposed to be right and wrong. His not-fiance is probably going to die, he can feel what he wants.

“I still love him, I think.”

Patrice nods like he was expecting, because it makes sense that he would. “Do you still want to?”

“No. Yes? He moved on. I’m...trying to.”

He blinks, slowly turns his head to look at Pasta, and feels his mouth stretch in what might be the worlds tiniest smile. Any other circumstances and he’d be grinning. “You’re moving on from the embodiment of sunshine to the saltiest man alive?”

Pasta looks at him, slightly panicked. “What?! No! What are you- I never told you who.”

“I’m just saying I feel like Tuukks is _ definitely _a different experience than Ny-”

“Shut _ up _Bergy!” He hisses, right as Brandon walks around the corner. He looks exhausted, eyes glassy from the lack of sleep while he leans against the wall like it’s the only reason he’s still standing.

Patrice feels bad for exactly two seconds and then Brando _ speaks _, and he’s up and running back down the hall.

….

_ “This show is stupid.” _

_ “You’re stupid.” Brad chirps back. Patrice makes a face. _

_ “Was that the best you could come up with?” _

_ Brad laughs, and the contestant burns chocolate for a third time. Maybe she should stop putting it in the microwave for five minutes. “You know I actually had a guy almost fight me because of that chirp.” _

_ Patrice picks at his plate, deciding on his next bite. “Yeah? Were you in second grade?” _

_ “No, like- remember a few years ago when we were playing Montreal? There was this call up who didn’t know how to pass to his own team, and I was like ‘wow you’re stupid’ and he flat out almost dropped gloves.” _

_ He decides on a dumpling and smirks as the contestant tells the camera that she decided to use a different microwave for her chocolate chips. “Was this the time the guy was screaming at you and you didn’t say anything back because you were laughing so hard you couldn’t stand up?” _

_ Brad kicks him and steals the bite of food right off his fork. “Yeah that time.” He giggles. _

_ Patrice turn to stare at him with a raised eyebrow and an affronted expression. “And to think I was gonna suck your dick after this.” _

_ He has to laugh as Brad’s face goes bright red and he starts sputtering a frantic apology. _

**….**

The doctor is standing just outside the waiting room. Patrice doesn’t even spare him a word before bursting through the door and grabbing Chara’s arm. He doesn’t quiet drag him into the hallway with him, but that’s mostly because Zee goes with him willingly, and also Patrice probably couldn’t drag Chara anywhere.

The doctor raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say a word except to introduce himself as he shakes both their hands. Patrice doesn’t give a shit how weird that might’ve looked. He’s so scared at this point that he feels like he’s going to throw up, pass out, or start sobbing the second the doctor tells him the news. Possibly all three.

Either way, he really, really needs his Captain there to steady him.

He doesn’t know what the doctor says. His ears start ringing right after the words _ ‘traumatic brain injury _’ and he doesn’t hear the rest. He nods in the right places and then they’re walking down the hall, through a set of double doors that require an ID badge to open, and stopping in front of a room. The door is open. He can’t get his eyes off the floor.

At some point Zee wrapped a hand around Patrice's arm. He didn’t notice, even if it was the only thing that made him move.

“We understand that this is a you’re all quiet popular in Boston, so we are treating this with the same caution as a high profile patient. If you want to see him you’ll have to show your ID at the front desk, and they’ll be able to let you in. A nurse will be in to see him shortly if you have any questions.”

The doctor leaves after and Patrice is faced with the daunting task of raising his eyes from the floor. Chara doesn’t say anything, just wisely guides them inside the room and shuts the door. That’s good. No ones going to give any sound bites about how they saw Patrice Bergeron sobbing on the ground.

A wordless sound of pain leaves his mouth at the sight of his boyfriend.

“Zee-” He gasps, and he’s quickly pulled into a tight embrace. He squeezes his eyes shut but tears leak out anyway, and he can’t breath, he can’t _ breath _when Brad is lying there like that.

“He’s going to be okay.” Chara says fiercely. “He’s going to be _ fine _. Do you hear me? He’s going to be okay.”

Patrice _ sobs _ . It feels like his chest is breaking from the force of it, and he shakes his head because no, _ no _ he’s _ not _. He can’t look like that and be okay. He can’t see it happening.

There’s a lot going on, he knows that much. He knows there were other things that the doctors had to deal with besides his head. He knows that the line going into Brads arm is an IV, and the thing on his finger is an oxygen monitor, and that at least one of the wires snaking underneath the hospital gown is a heart monitor. 

He knows that the two thicker tubes that converge by his mouth and turn into one to go down Brads throat is to keep him breathing. 

He knows that it’s fucking incredible they’re even here at all. Beneath the horrible crushing fear of the unknowable future he’s facing, there’s a huge burst of relief that threatens to bring him to his knees. 

Brad is alive. He’s still alive. 

But for how long?

He looks - not small, because it would take a lot of work to make a hockey player look small - but _ overwhelmed _by the sheer number of medical instruments around him. Wire and tubes and bags and drips and moniters; things beeping and hissing and here’s Patrice, crying so hard he can barely stand because underneath it all is Brad, just as white as the sheets he lays on.

Pale doesn’t cover it. It’s such an unnatural shade to him, that suddenly Patrice understands why they have to use make up on dead people before funerals. Seeing someone look normal one last time is much, much better than seeing them look like _ that _. His lips are colorless, there’s dark bruises under his eyes, and still some bits of dried blood on his forhead from a cut that looks to have been stitched. 

They had to shave part his hair. Apparently there was the possibility of surgery, but the lack of massive bandage around his head would imply then didn’t go through with it. Patrice was too out of it hear why.

Somehow, through a series of start-stop movements, he finds himself in a chair pushed up right next to the bedside. Zee is next to him, saying something about Brads parents, but Patrice can’t stop crying long enough to hear him. 

Underneath the million wires and pieces of tape holding everything in place, the hand next to Patrice is relatively free. There’s a few scraps on his knuckles. The O2 monitor is on his ring finger, and there’s a few hospital bracelets on his wrist. 

It’s better than the other hand, which has a soft cast on it and is propped up by a pillow.

Carefully, as if not to wake him, Patrice slips his hand underneath Brads and tangles their fingers together. The pads of his fingers trace the spot where the ring would go. 

It’s cold. Marchy’s skin is fridgid against his own, no matter how much warmth he tries to rub into it.

So he cries. Patrice cries out every bit of emotion he has. He cries because he’s angry. He cries because he’s sad, he cries because he’s hurting, he’s in love, he’s _ scared _. He cries so hard he almost gets sick again. He cries until his head is pounding and he can’t breath out of his nose and he’s so dizzy that if he was standing he’d be on the floor.

Brad doesn’t move once.

**…**

_ “Wait, were you being serious about the no sex thing? Like the food wasn’t really that good, but I can totally make it up to you.” _

_ Patrice tosses a balled up t-shirt at Brad. “No, I was serious because it’s almost midnight, and I’m tired and I’m sore and-” _

_ “Old?” Brad laughs, but leers at Patrice as he stripes to get in the shower. “I feel like I could definitely get you energized there bud.” _

_ He rolls his eyes. “Practice tomorrow. At noon. And we have video before.” _

_ “But no game.” Brad points out. “Plus, are we really at the age where sex is to much energy, because honestly I wasn’t expecting to get to that until I was like, eighty.” _

_ And well- he’s not really gonna argue with that. Turning to hide his grin, Patrice sighs dramatically. _

_ He doesn’t say a word as he turns on the water and peeks out the door to see if Marchy’s pouting on the bed like he usually does. The petulant look he gets when Brad sees him looking is almost enough to make him laugh. _

_ Kicking the door nearly shut, waits another minute before calling behind him.“Shower’s big enough for two.” _

_ He laughs at the excited whoop that emanates from the bedroom, and steps under the stream of hot water. _

_ ... _

_ “So that was-” _

_ “Awesome? Amazing? Mind blowing? Yes I know, I have talents.” _

_ “-dangerous.” He finishes flatly, toweling himself off while looking for a pair of sweats. Brad scoffs. _

_ “You only nearly concussed yourself twice. It was great, we should do it again.” _

_ His phone chimes from across the room. “Hey can you get that?” _

_ Patrice is busy trying to figure out how he put his shirt on backwards, so he misses how Brads face changes. He just looks over to ask who it is, and sees a distinct lack of swagger and mirth in his expression, something rather odd for a post sex Brad. He’s scrolling through something on Patrice's phone with a distinctly not happy face. _

_ “What’s up?” _

_ “It’s, uh- Charlie. He was texting you while we were in the shower.” _

_ Something tugs in his chest, the same feeling he gets whenever someone on the team get laid out from a bad hit on the ice. He gives up the battle with his shirt to walk around the bed and look at his phone. “Okay? Is he alright?” _

_ “He’s asking for help.” _

**…**

Patrice has convinced himself of two things since arriveing at MGH. First being that time is fluid, and second is that it flows much differently in a hospital than outside it.

He woke up after the nurse came in the third time because she had to do things with the IV and he was in the way. She left, and he promptly got into a yelling match with Chara because he wouldn’t leave.

Life cannot stop just because they’re in here. So he yells, and he says things he really, really regrets, but it makes Chara leave and it makes him take the team with him, so at least something positive came out of it.

Then it’s just Patrice and Brad and what seems like every single person who works in the hospital coming and going and checking things and changing bags and murmuring amongst themselves. No one talks to Patrice, so Patrice decides he might as well talk to himself.

If what they’re saying is true, anyway, then that’s what he’s really doing.

Head injuries are really tricky. He knows this, but he didn’t know to what extent until the second conversation with the brain specialist guy, who basically says that they know there will be damage, but they have no idea how much or where or how long it will last. They don’t know if he’ll ever wake up. They don’t know if he’ll remember anything.

No ones knows, is the consensus when it comes to his head. But they still have the audacity to tell him that Brad can’t hear them, and that he’s not in any pain.

He shattered his wrist, cracked his pelvis, fractured his shoulder and _ literally _broke half of his ribs, and they want to tell Patrice that he’s no in any pain.

So he doesn’t believe them on that, and he doesn’t believe them that Brad can’t hear what Patrice is saying. He’s going to fill the silence somehow, and it isn’t going to be sleeping or eating or whatever else everyone keeps telling him to do.

Three hours are killed on the phone with Brads mom, another hour and a half with his dad, wherein Patrice convinces them not to rush to Boston, because nothing is happening here. They were thinking of surgery for Brads wrist, but the swelling started to go down and they were able to set it correctly. Between the whole brain swelling thing and the damage to his chest they’re not about to take him off the vent anytime soon, so he figures there’s no point in dragging his parents into this hell of a place.

Patrice believes time moves differently in a hospital, and it’s mostly because he can account for about six hours, except Zee is back and telling him it’s been _ days _.

“You need to go home.” 

“I’ll go home when the doctors can promise me he won’t die the second I leave this fucking room.”

He’s memorized every detail of their private room. Walked around it so much he’s probably worn a track into the tile. He isn’t leaving.

Chara just sighs, and sits. “You know I can make you leave right?”

Patrice jerks his gaze away from Marchy’s face to stare challengingly at the vet. “Will you?”

“No.” He sighs. “Because I figured if this was Tatiana I’d be doing the same thing. But you are my friend Patrice, and if I think you’re gonna end up in the bed next to him, I’ll drag you out of here without hesitation.”

Bergy drops his gaze a little lower and forces himself to relax. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“About what I said earlier- I shouldn’t have, I was just-”

“Bergy. I know.”

He nods, biting his lip to get ride of the tightness in his throat. He hasn’t cried since that first night, and doesn’t want to break that streak now.

“He’d kill us if we weren’t focused you know? If we lost because we were thinking about him.”

“Well then he can wake up and yell at us.”

Patrice feels his eyebrows draw together in confusion. “You won the last two.”

Zee grins at him, looking too satisfied with himself. Patrice rolls his eyes and squeezes Brads hand. 

So maybe Patrice can’t tell the passage of time very well, but he’s been a little better than the very first night. He watched both games on his phone, propped up against Brads knees and talking through the whole thing because Brad always thought it was hilarious when they would watch hockey games together and Patrice would spend the entire time flip flopping between scathing criticism and glowing praise. 

He decided, after making everyone leave, that he needed to be better. Brad needed him to be better. 

_ ‘Better’ _mostly consists of functioning at a level a little higher than constant hysteria. It means he manages to fill the silence, but only because the quiet is fucking with his head. He keeps finding himself forgetting what he was doing, who he was talking to, why he was there. It probably has something to do with his lack of sleep and the stress, but it’s fine. He’s fine. He has to be fine.

Brad needs Patrice to be okay. So Patrice is fine. 

He’s fine. Thats why he felt the need to tell Brad every favorite memory he had of the two of them, the entire time wondering if it would be enough.

Like reminding Brad about the time he set the stove on fire trying to make dinner and Patrice couldn’t put it out because he was laughing so hard he was crying would make his chest heal faster. Like telling him about the first time Patrice said ‘_ I love you _’ would fix his brain, or reciting his favorite moment in the Garden would ensure there’d be no nerve damage in Brads arm.

Like if he just told enough stories, if he just _ reminded _ Brad about how _ good _they are together, then maybe he’d be okay. 

_ ‘If this enough?’ _ He’d think after every moment retold _ . ‘Do I love you enough for you to come back to me? _’ 

“Patrice!”

“What!” He snaps, jolting as he refocuses on the present. Zee frowns at him, and Bergy’s left to wonder how many times Chara said his name. 

“I said if you’re gonna stay here, you’re going to eat and you’re going to change.”

Patrice scrubs at his face. He isn’t going to argue this. “Sure, but-”

“You’re not leaving the room and you don’t have clothes, yeah I got it.” A backpack gets dropped by his feet, and orders to text him what he wants from the cafeteria gets called over his shoulder as Chara leaves. 

He kisses Brads knuckles and stands from the chair, legs protesting the sudden movement while his back screams at him. Celebrity status protection doesn’t mean he gets to break all the rules of the ICU, so when they kick him out to do tests or whatever, he catches a few hours of shut eye in the straight backed chairs they have in the waiting room. It’s a miracle only one picture of him has been leaked.

The picture triggered a frankly overwhelming amount of support from fan base. Apparently the teams mail box has been literally overflowing with get well wishes, and he knows PR released a few videos of some of the guys sorting and reading them. 

It’d be touching, if it wasn’t for the situation they’ve all found themselves in. 

A change of clothes does wonders, as does the fact that Brad’s vitals don’t suddenly dip while he’s changing. They’ve been doing that lately. Every time he starts drift off, he’s jolted awake by the beeping of an alarm. Something drops, something changes, and Patrice thinks it’s the beginning of the end.

But then whatever happened corrects itself, and it’s almost like nothing ever happened. The doctors tell him that his body is still fighting to remain stable and alive, and it’s a work in progress.

Patrice can already tell that he’s developing a rather powerful and irrational fear of falling asleep again.

“Eat.” Some sort of sandwich container gets dropped down on the little movable side table that they have for patients. He hooks the stand with his foot and tugs it over to the chair so he won’t have to leave Brad’s bedside. 

The problem with trying to eat anything in the room, besides the fact that he’s almost always nauseous just thinking about food, is that Brad is _ right there _, lying cold and still and pale and never showing a single sign of natural movement. It’s really hard to think about swallowing when the love of your life is next to taking artificial breaths.

Chara catches how little hes eaten, gaze sharp with concern.

“Pat.”

He grits his teeth and tries to focus. “I’m trying, alright? I’m trying.” 

Zee just _ looks _at him. Patrice drops his gaze away from Brad and towards the floor. There’s too much there, too much in the way he’s looking at him. Too much worry. Too much concern.

Too much _ love _. Too much of the kind that comes from years of standing next to each other and fighting for a shared dream. The kind of love that exists from being next to each other through extatic wins and crushing loses. It’s knowing how the absolute hell of a long season mixed with injuries and recovery and uncertainty feels, but helping each other through it anyway. It’s that kind, and it’s a lot to feel and it’s a lot to give.

(He wouldn’t trade it away for anything, except, _ maybe _, to just have one person back.)

“Let me drive you home. You can sleep in a real bed-”

He shakes his head. “Zee, I can’t, you _ know _I can’t.”

“Yeah, Patrice. I know you can’t eat and I know you can’t sleep and I know it’s because of this place. Just a day Patrice. Stay at my place if you can’t go to yours, the kids would love it.” 

He’s so tired_ , _he almost says yes. He wants what Zee is offering because he’s so drained, both physically and emotionally. It sounds almost perfect - he’s met Zee’s wife before, been over their house to play with the kids and occasionally babysit. Tati will more than likely bully him into eating and then he’ll get a real bed with a real pillow and a shower and it sounds just like what Brad would do if he wasn’t the reason for Patrice needing to be taken care of.

He drags a hand down his face and pushes away his lunch. “Maybe...maybe in a couple days. If he doesn’t wake up soon.”

Zee is officially going to be his best man, because he takes the compromise without question, and doesn’t even push him to finish the food. “Thirty six hours gets us to the end of normal visiting hours tomorrow. You leave with me after that, regardless of what happens.”

“Deal.” Patrice slides back down to resume his normal position, slumped over the side of the hospital bed to us Brads good arm as a pillow. 

Chara sighs, but stays silent for the rest of his visit. When he finally leaves, Patrice feels like the room is too silent, empty besides himself. It feels like Brad isn’t really there at all. It feels like he’s fighting for nothing, just driving himself insane in an empty room with a body that isn’t his boyfriend.

“What would it take,” He murmurs, getting comfortable with his head on Brads arm, hand in his. “For you to come back to me?” 

**….**

_ “You don’t have to go.” He pleads, because something is there in his gut, telling him not to let Brad out of his sight. “We can order them a cab or an uber or something, you don’t have to leave.” _

_ “Relax, Bergy, I know how to drive and I don’t mind.” _

_ “Okay, but-” _

_ “Look, babe,” Brad turns away from the coat rack to peck him on the lips. “I’ll call you, okay? Charlie asked for help, we offered to always be there, so I’m gonna be there. I can talk you down from the car.” _

_ Patrice blows out a breath and nods. “Right, yeah just- be careful okay?” _

_ “Never!” Brad yells, totally not picking up on Patrice's apprehension. _

_ “I love you.” He calls, watching, irrationally nervous as Brad walks out the door. _

_ He doesn’t hear Marchy say it back. _

**…. **

He doesn’t get an answer. 

Well- he _ does _, but he doesn’t get the one he hoped for.

He falls asleep - _ really _falls asleep, not the basic drifting he’d done while waiting for the nurses to let him back in the room - after promising Brad the world and everything beyond if he just stayed with Patrice. He promised to never play hockey again, if that’s what it would take. 

_ “If you can’t play, I won’t play. _ ” He’d said. _ “I won’t leave you alone. _”

He meant it. God above, Patrice meant it.

His fears before were unfounded. He can’t even fathom leaving Brad, not now, not ever. No matter what happens, Patrice knows he’s sticking by Marchy’s side until one them finally kicks the bucket. 

It seems though, that maybe Brad doesn’t feel the same, because Patrice wakes up from the best sleep he’s gotten in forever rather abruptly. Some remnants of a dream are still wrapping him up in a blanket of safety and warmth and love that seems oddly familiar, when an orderly pulls him off Brad and deposits him in a corner of the room. His limbs feel heavy and his head is foggy and it takes him a long minute to realize why there’s so many doctors and nurses inside the room.

The shrill whine isn’t in his head. It’s an alarm. One doctor is saying something about pressures and another is yelling out orders for certain drugs and- oh.

Brad is dying, but apparently more so than the slow decline he was at before. This is different. This time, he’s technically dead.

Patrice can’t even move. 

Some sound akin to that of a wounded animal comes out of his mouth when a nurse declares no pulse. The doctor barks out something to someone and before they can peel him off the floor and out of the room there’s a large amount of motion by several people and then-

“Got him back-”

“-pressures coming up-”

“-O2 is at 90 and rising.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again but nothing comes out, not a word or sound or breath. A nurse detaches from the throng around Brad and helps him to his feet before not so gently guiding him outside the room with a promise to let him back in as soon as she can.

Patrice sits in a chair, knocks his head back into the wall and closes his eyes. 

His phone finds itself in his hand, already ringing because it can’t even respect the dull blankness of his thoughts. He knows he probably- whatever. He needs to have this conversation anyway.

_ “Hey Patrice, it’s a little late, how you doing?” _

“He, um- he coded.”

There’s a pause, but Cassidy's voice doesn’t move away from the calm quiet he answered the phone with. _ “Did they get him back?” _

“Yes.”

Another pause. This time it’s more loaded, and when Bruce speaks it doesn’t sound like it’s meant for Patrice’s ears. “_ Well that’s interesting.” _

Patrice blinks his eyes open. “What?”

_ “Nothing, _” He says hurriedly. “Are you okay?”

“They’re taking him for more tests. I just, uh. You should- you should tell the team. They might need to be here.” 

_ “I’ll let them know.” _Coach sounds like he’s just humoring Patrice, even if his voice is still gentle. Pat can’t figure out what it is he doesn’t know, so he chalks it up to the stress and fact that he can’t stand up without seeing spots for five minutes afterwards because hes so tired. He hangs up without another word, stuffs his phone back into his pocket and closes his eyes again. 

He doesn’t know what to do anymore. He doesn’t know how to deal with this. 

Brad’s parents will arrive at Logan tomorrow. It’ll be rather perfect timing. If he lives or if he dies, either way Patrice will be able to leave the hospital and know that he isn’t alone.

His own parents have called him about a thousand times, and he hasn’t been able to answer once. He knows that if he talks to his mom he’ll break down all over again. 

It’s just too much. He doesn’t know what to do about any of it, and this point he’s too far gone to ask for help.

**…**

_ Patrice worries his bottom lip, occasionally pulling the phone away from his ear to check if he has any new texts. The dread in his gut is screaming now, and he doesn’t know how to tell Brad that he needs him to stop, to turn around and come back to the house because something about this is bad, it’s bad. _ _ “How are you even going to get them all into your car? I should’ve come with you, brought a second car-” _

_ “And then everyone would have seen the two of us dragging our drunk hockey kids into two cars, because I can show up and be relatively unnoticed, but if you show up it’s going to be all over deadspin.” _

_ He frowns. “That doesn’t make any sense.” _

_ “The Great Saint, the wonderful, the grand, the all-powerful Patrice Bergeron heroically saving his group of rookies? I’d watch that shit at all hours of the day. Just Brad Marchand dragging his dumbass linemate and other assorted young hockey players out of a bar? That’s boring. Come one Bergy it’s all about the clicks. You’re famous.” _

_ “I hate you.” He groans. Brad laughs, a little sharp but amused none the less. Patrice hears the click-click of his blinker, and thinks maybe they can do this, maybe he’s just being paranoid, when a sharp intake of breath is heard over the line. _

_ “Brad-” _

_ There’s a horrible crunching noise, and the line beeps dead. _

** _…_ **

“Sir? You can see him now.”

“Thanks.” He stands, biting his lip as he follows the nurse back towards the room. He’s afraid to ask, but he needs to know what to expect. “Do they know what happened?” 

He’s waiting for the bad news. The _ ‘he’s getting worse’ _ and the _ ‘there’s nothing we can do’ _ and The _ ‘you may want to start making arrangements, do you know when his family will get here? _’

But Instead-

Instead the nurse _ smiles _.

“The doctor just left actually, but I can tell you that while they don’t know for sure why he coded, they did rerun a lot of tests and found that the swelling in his brain has gone down significantly. There’s no sign of infection, and his lungs are responding positively to the current treatment. It’s too early to tell for sure, but right now he’s doing very well.”

Patrice almost throws up on her shoes.

He must turn pretty green or something, because her eyes widen and she takes a step back before asking if he’s okay.

“I’m- yeah. Yeah, _ yes _, yes I’m- yes.” The irrational urge to hug her nearly overwhelms him. He feels sort of like he’s on fire, sheer relief making his skin hot and blood rush in his ears.

“I understand receiving good news after a lot of bad can feel overwhelming- _ oof _!”

So- maybe he does end up hugging her. It’s just- he was so convinced Brad was never getting better, so convinced he was never going to leave that hospital bed and of course he knows he could still- things could still go bad, but he never considered them going _ good _.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry, thank you so much.” He babbles, pulling away from her and just about sprinting into the room. It’s a little disappointing to see that Brad looks almost as bad as when he left him, but that’s probably to be expected. Just because internally he’s starting to do better doesn’t mean that the hospital staff is going to remove every tube and wire. They aren’t exactly concerned with the aesthetic.

Patrice slowly sits back in the chair, whole body shaking from adrenaline. 

“Did you hear that baby?” He mumbles, head once again pillowed against Brads arm. He doesn’t even want to consider what the position has done to his back. “They said you’re getting better.” 

Squeezing shut his burning eyes, he buries his face in the hospital gown. “You’re so close sweetheart, you’re so close. Just come back to me.”

He won’t cry. He can’t. Not yet. He promised himself that he wouldn’t.

Not until he _ knew _. 

Forcing himself to sleep has never really worked, but he attempts it now because opening his eyes seems much to scary of a task. Perhaps his brain is just tired enough that works, because he starts to slip in and out of awareness.

It all happens a while later - he’s sure it’s been some time, but when you’re trying to sleep you never really know. He blinks out of the light doze, and for a split second- 

-just for a second, just long enough that he could convince himself that he’s starting to hallucinate-

-he sees Brad reaching for him.

Not the Brad in the bed, no. No this is _ his _ Brad, his healthy, smiling, crooked nose Brad with a cheeky glint in his eyes that says he just laid out the most fantastic prank and needs you to help him with it. His Brad that tells him he loves Patrice, that says _ ‘I’m ready now’ _ and kisses Patrice and he wakes up so confused, so lost.

And then the Brad in the bed starts _ choking, _and thats when Patrice finally lets his tears fall.

**…**

_ He throws up in the sink after the third time Brads phone goes right to voicemail. _

_ His hands are shaking but he grabs his keys anyway and doesn’t bother to lock the door on his way out. He barely remembers to grab his shoes. _

_ It seems like there’s no one on the road. Boston is a busy city, there’s people driving even at one in the morning, but he only sees one other car as he travels to the highway. Patrice knows the route Brad would’ve gone and he knows the address of the bar. He knows the exit Marchy would’ve been at. _

_ He barely breathes the whole way there, totally numb, unable to feel his own skin. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. What is he- _

_ There’s lights up ahead. Red and Blue and white, flashing aggressively against the darkness of the night. _

_ He parks right behind a police car. Doesn’t even turn off the car, scrambling to get out of it so fast he falls to his hands and knees. _

_ The pavement is cool against his stinging palms. Surely there must be more sound that this, something to drown out how his breathing echoes in his ears. He stands and he stumbles into a run, towards the ambulance to see if he’s- if there’s someone inside, if- _

_ Theres a truck facing the wrong direction, its side and front end completely destroyed, and there, squished up against the concrete edge of the highway is a flattened crumpled mess of a black vehicle that at some point tonight held his boyfriend. _

...

He wakes up.

That is how his nightmare ends, not with a funeral, but with Brad Marchand waking up and Patrice getting to be there for it. 

Albeit he probably could’ve done without the near literal heart attack of Brad fighting to vent, but they sedate him, give him another twelve hours on it, and by then they’ve managed to wean him off it enough that he’s essentially breathing on his own.

The tube comes out, an oxygen mask goes on and it occasionally gets traded out with a CPAP machine because broken ribs make for a hard time breathing normally, especially when you’ve broken that many of them.

So Brad wakes up, several times in fact, and then he’s awake enough to slur out Patrice’s name and Patrice has not stopped crying since.

_ “Am I dead?” He asks, and Patrice has to laugh, he has to because of course thats the first thing Brad says after waking up from what should have been a fatal accident. _

_ “No, mon ange, you aren’t.” He sighs. “You certainly tried hard to be, but you aren’t.” _

He’d forgotten. And wasn’t that just the hardest thing to swallow? It wasn’t the fear or the guilt or the way he learned to hate himself for not being able to fix this, for causing it. It was that he’d _ forgotten _ , exactly, what Brad sounded like. It felt like, hearing those words, that he forgot who Brad _ was _.

(Selfless, is what he was.)

_ Brad frowns, glassy eyes struggling to focus. “Charlie.” He slurs. “Jake-” _

_ “Hey, shhh, no it’s okay, they’re fine, they’re all fine okay? Zee made sure of it. Everyone’s fine except you.” _

(And scared.)

_ “Bergy?” _

_ Patrice squeezes his hand and tries to remember how to inhale. His throat hurts so bad from holding back tears that he can barely talk. “I’m right here Marchy, I’m right here.” _

_ Brad is crying, and Patrice panics, he panics because four and a half days in a hospital did not instill him with the knowledge of how to handle this part. _

_ “Hey, hey it's alright Brad, it’s alright, just tell me what’s wrong. Are you in pain, are you-” _

_ “I didn’t think I’d see you again.” _

(And caring.)

_ Patrice opens his mouth to say something, some version of a reassurance that dies the second his brain processes what just happened. _

_ The words cut straight through him, rendering him nothing more than a sobbing mess of jumbled emotions and pure exhaustion. _

_ And Brad actually looks at him like Patrice is the one who everyone needs to be worried about. _

(And above everything else - above all of it, if there’s one thing that everyone should know about Brad Marchand - is that as purely as he can, and with everything he has, he _ loves _.)

_ “Patrice.” He mumbles. Bergy squeezes his hand, because he’s assuming the word was supposed to be his name, and wants to let Brad know that he heard him. _

_ “Love you.” _

_ “Je sais, mon ange,” Patrice whispers, lips pressed against his neck. “I love you too.” _

...

So Brad wakes up, and then it’s long after Brads gone back asleep that Patrice’s tears finally dry, his skin tight and nose blocked and all the gross things that come with being emotionally spent. Despite how horrible he feels - at this point he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stand when Zee comes to get him - he still feels better. Different. It feels like peace. It seems impossible that anything could happen now. He’ll be okay with leaving, because he knows Brad is going to be okay. 

“Thank you,” He whispers, unsure of why or how he knows, but knowing all the same. “Thank you for coming back to me.” 

(This was a choice. Waking up was a choice.)

He knows Brad can actually hear him this time. He knows everything will be fine, now that he made his choice to stay. 

Zee knocks on the door a few minutes later. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” He murmurs, pressing one last kiss into Brad’s hair. “I’m ready.”

...

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos keep me writing, especially during school when I really, really don't feel like I have the time (spoilers: I do have the time, just not the motivation - comments get me there! I appreciate you guys so much!)
> 
> There’s several hidden ships in this, squint to see them if you want. 
> 
> Also okay I KNOW THAT THEY WOULDN'T LET PATRICE STAY IN THE ICU but like story and plot and I've already committed several crimes against medical accuracy so it stayed. 
> 
> Question for everyone if they've gotten this far: Part Three is coming, would anyone like a part four that, while much shorter, would be the aftermath of all this while alternating between Brad and Patrice? Or a part five with charlie/jake?
> 
> Special thanks to Alex for giving me the confidence to write this, and for bashing my writers block over the head with a mallet.
> 
> [Tumblr](https://thebluejayawe.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to throw me some prompts or talk!


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